


You Know My Words (Look Up the Name)

by sleeperservice



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Missed Connections, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 12:49:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19110004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeperservice/pseuds/sleeperservice
Summary: Zach's soulmark shows up during his rookie season after a game against the Wild. Nobody told him it would take years to find out who else had one show up that night.





	You Know My Words (Look Up the Name)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aer/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Aer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aer/pseuds/Aer) in the [PuckingRare2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PuckingRare2019) collection. 



Zach didn't know why he was so keyed up about this game. It had to be about his getting scratched earlier that week. The Wild meant very little to him; his hometown team had been the North Stars, after all. Maybe it was because of all the people back in Minnesota who were paying attention to this game. It wasn't like the Devils got many chances to play the Wild and Zach knew how Minnesotans loved keeping track of the local boys. At least it wasn't a road game. The pressure of that would happen in the next few seasons. Zach didn't need that pressure added to the pressure of trying to perform coming off of a healthy scratch. This game was happening right now and it was the game he needed to worry about.

The game itself was extremely chippy. The Wild were one of those teams that felt like they were running four checking lines, apparently, and Zach wasn't used to the sheer physicality of that sort of game yet. Even the Wild's particular hotshot rookie was getting into it, this blond kid from Finland who looked like he was entirely made of angles and elbows, and the elbows seemed to be all aimed at Zach. Zach got that Koivu kid back at least once, and Koivu didn't look too pleased about it.

Zach had to take a faceoff later in the game. He was all right with playing wing, but he missed faceoffs a lot. He hadn't expected meeting Koivu's icy blue glare across the dot. There he was, the fourth-line scrapper, face still as a statue but with the small twitch of his hands giving away that he was a living being.

"Nice smile," Zach said. Koivu of course was doing nothing of the sort and he didn't crack one at the remark, either. He continued glaring at Zach. He must have not been much of a talker; Zach was hoping to rattle his cage a bit and it didn't work, as Koivu won the faceoff.

The game ended in a shootout; the Devils won without Zach's involvement. The momentary feeling of elation from the win wore off when the team hit the showers and his lineys noticed something new about Zach.

"Your soulmark came in tonight, in the worst possible spot," Jamie said as he slapped Zach on the small of the back.

"Nice tramp stamp," Sergei said. "It says 'Oof.'"

Zach frowned. "'Oof.' That's it?"

"Who'd you hit tonight?" Jamie asked.

"I dunno. Guys. They hit me, I hit them, I got in their way. At least they didn't say 'Fuck.'"

"I heard lots of that," Sergei said. "You must not have hit this guy that hard, he says 'oof' instead. We have to get you to push harder."

Zach's retort about small guys was bit off when he realized who was saying it. Sergei was also a small dude, and tough as they came. He was right. Getting tougher would help him get better and stay around more. Zach wasn't easily bullied off the puck or otherwise, but he did need to learn how to throw the weight he had around.

When they were done at the end of the night and getting back into their street clothes, Zach asked Jamie to take a picture of the soulmark with Zach's phone. There it was, "oof" in silvery, messy script right above the crack of his ass. Of course, the first word his soulmate had to say to him was something generic that could have been from any of the players he had made contact with that night, and of course it had to be where a lower back tattoo would go. At least a soulmark's coloring was impossible to recreate with a tattoo. It was still really, really embarrassing.

On the drive home, Zach tried to remember what players he had said anything to that night, and what he had said. The problem with that was that he was a naturally chatty person and he talked to everybody. He at least was sure it wasn't an official who was his soulmate, as he hadn't run into any of those. His soulmate could literally be any of the Wild players he had taken a shift against that night. He'd have to look at the game logs to see who was on the ice at the same time and start from there.

  


The game logs proved to be of little help. There were the players he had registered an actual hit against, and those who had hit him, and the players he had shared the ice with. That was the place he was starting from, but he had very few connections on the Wild. He didn't know how a team in Minnesota could have so few Minnesotans on it, which wasn't surprising as they barely had any Americans on the team. This rendered Zach's USA Hockey connections useless.

He put out feelers with teammates who knew people who knew people on the Wild, but none of them had any idea of whose mark came in that night, much less of what it said. Whoever it was wanted to keep it quiet, or they were too shy to ask about any of the Devils. His soulmate's mark must have been in a not very visible place.

* * *

The Devils didn't play the Wild the next season. The closest Zach got to a Wild player was during Worlds in 2007, during the only game he played in; he had joined the team right after the Devils got eliminated from the playoffs, but it wasn't soon enough for Team USA. They were playing Team Finland in the quarterfinals. Koivu was there on the other team, being as cold and distant as possible and still showing nothing but that icy glare. What would it be like being bonded to a guy like that for the rest of your life? Zach didn't want to think about it. Watching Koivu show an actual emotion during the semifinal game didn't change Zach's feelings on that.

* * *

When the Devils finally met with the Wild in 2008, there had been enough player turnover that there was a good chance that Zach's soulmate wasn't left on the team. He still had kept note of the players he had encountered the night he got the soulmark and had matched them against the roster, and it was enough to work from. Unfortunately he wasn't going to get the chance to go around and ask. The game was in Minnesota and there were too many people around. Zach's relatives and friends, and Paul Martin's relatives and friends were all there and Langenbrunner had enough people there to populate a small town, and it seemed like every single one of the people all three of them had invited had postgame passes. Pregame was going to be bad enough. There wasn't time or opportunity for Zach to go hunting for his soulmate and he wasn't in any more possession of a clue than he had been almost three years before.

The game was worse than Zach had expected it to be, even with all the distractions. He had one distraction in particular, nothing to do with family or friends. It was on the ice. Koivu was dominating the Devils and Zach couldn't keep his eyes off him. There was just something about the way he moved out there; sure, he was a bit slow, but his passing was incredible. The Wild still had better players, but this was the only one who held Zach's interest. Facing up against Koivu confirmed that he probably wasn't Zach's soulmate; Koivu was far more likely to have said "fuck" instead of "oof" when taking a hit, even a small one.

Zach had told his parents about the soulmark almost immediately after he got it, and the circumstances around which it happened. He knew his dad had tried asking around about it too and got even more of a run-around than Zach had. His dad could see his dejected expression after the game and knew immediately what it was about.

"That's not a hockey-sad look you have on your face," his dad said.

The Devils had won in a shootout, but Zach's line didn't do anything to help the offense. He did feel sad about that. "Are you sure? You saw what we looked like out there." 

"Yeah, I'm sure. You'll beat yourself up about that later, next practice. It's another look. You still haven't found him," his dad said matter-of-factly. 

"No. Maybe he doesn't want a soulmate, or he doesn't want me, or maybe he's not looking too hard to find whoever he thinks it is." 

"I think it's the last, if anything, Don't give up hope. You have a soulmate, and you know me and your mom don't, and Jordan doesn't have one yet either. The universe has ways of making it work out. He'll show up."

* * *

The Devils had been blown out rather quickly in the quarterfinals at the end of the season, and even worse, it was by the Rangers. It hurt. Zach was thankful he had been invited to play for the US at Worlds again. He, and Paul, could try to gain some redemption for the way their season ended. He was also named alternate captain. This was the most awesome thing that had ever happened to him in hockey. He had gone from being passed over for the Olympics because they felt he wasn't ready, and in two years making it to alternate captain. Things had changed, and he was going to try to live up to the trust they had in him. Zach always tried his hardest in everything and this was no exception.

He considered it fortunate that the tournament was in Canada that year, and that they were assigned to Halifax for the preliminary round. It was a nice city, smallish, quiet, with a long history behind it. The hockey fans there were loud as anything, though, especially for the Canada-USA game. He'd given the team the first goal in that one, but they didn't end up winning. They still moved on to the qualifying round, which was still in Halifax. They had plenty of time to, well, get bored of Halifax. It was a good thing that the pace of the tournament was so fast. It gave Zach less time to worry. He kept feeling something odd when he was walking around the city, like there was someone there he should be looking for. He hadn't felt it in the US-Canada game, though, so it definitely wasn't coming from Brent Burns. The feeling was definitely lurking in the arena, though.

The first game of the qualifying round against Germany went great for Zach. He scored two goals and was named player of the game. It was a hard-fought game on all sides and it had him feeling worn out, a bit, until he walked around the next day. There was a warm feeling in the air and it wasn't the spring weather. It was like he was feeling someone else's mood, but he didn't see anyone around him he knew besides his teammates. He thought he saw some guys from the Finnish national team, but it could have just been fans. He couldn't really recognize most of the non-NHL players, anyway. They were going to be playing Finland in two days in the second game of the qualifier, so it was time to learn who they were.

The game was not the highlight of his career, or anyone else's, for that matter. Not on the US team, at least. He had slid over the fact that Mikko Koivu was in fact on the Finnish national team during this tournament, again. After Koivu's goal came entirely too much action and drama on both sides; he didn't see the initial hit Jussi Jokinen made, but he saw the aftermath when Brown hit him back. Zach grabbed some Finn he didn't know in the big scrum. It was not what he had expected in an international tournament against a team that really didn't have a history of big fights. The bad officiating, he did expect, but there was nothing he could do about that either, especially after that earlier goal that shouldn't have been. Zach felt really helpless and he felt like he was feeling someone else's helpless and floundering feelings as well. Could Koivu really be his soulmate, over there on the bench, showing an emotion other than coldness or celebration? Zach couldn't see him at all to see if his face betrayed anything. After the fight, there was no good way to approach Koivu to ask.

The US national team had stayed in Halifax for the semifinals, too, in which they of course had to face Finland. Zach was almost positive, after his experience that week, that his soulmate had to have been Mikko Koivu. Everything matched up, and the feeling of shared feelings hadn't gone away. Unfortunately, once again, he wasn't ever going to get the chance to ask him directly that year as Team USA promptly got beat by Finland in OT and had to go home. There wasn't enough time in the handshake line to do it, but the little buzzy feeling Zach got when he shook Koivu's hand couldn't have just been in his head. They were going to play the Wild the next season. He was going to settle it then.

* * *

Unfortunately for Zach, the game against the Wild was almost a year later, in March of 2009. He could have tried to make contact with Mikko Koivu in that ten months but he wanted to meet him first. Talking on the phone or texting wouldn't have done either of them any good if their bond was real, or if the bond was real but Koivu didn't want it. Zach had his own doubts about wanting to be bonded to him, so why wouldn't the doubt extend in the other direction? This was something that had to be settled and confirmed live, man to man.

In any case, the Devils finally had that missing link to the 2005 Wild that they hadn't in previous seasons. Brian Rolston had joined them in free agency and almost the first words Roli had said to Zach in training camp were about Zach's soulmark.

"When did you get that?" Roli asked, with a look in his eyes like he probably knew already.

"Against you guys in '05, actually," Zach replied. "But nobody really pushed it, and I didn't know anyone over there, so I thought I'd wait around."

Roli nodded but didn't say anything in return. Zach was almost sure he knew which Wild player had the soulmark. The silver image that had replaced Roli's soulmark words after his soulmate had acknowledged the bond was very prominent, so it couldn't have been him anyway, but it was someone he was close to. Zach wanted to ask him about Mikko Koivu but there was still something holding him back, and it was still holding him in late March.

The Wild had come into town the day before the game. Roli was going to have a few old teammates over from the Wild that night for dinner. Zach almost asked him if Koivu was one of them but he couldn't bring himself to again. Zach was going to have to make a reckoning, and he was going to have to make it pregame the next day. The last minute, and Zach never thought of himself as a last-minute guy. He had to admit to himself that he was afraid of what would happen.

Zach was then very surprised to get a phone call from Roli that night.

"Got anything going right now?" Roli asked.

"Not really. I'm thinking about maybe going to think about sleep."

"Come over. I have someone here I think you'd really like to meet. You may be spending the night here, so pack something."

"Someone? Can you be more specific than that? And spending the night, really?"

Roli's voice was more serious than he had ever heard it. "Yes. Really. And he won't let me be more specific."

"Ah. Yeah, sure. I think I know what this is."

"Yeah, it is. He's anxious. Get here quickly before he chickens out."

Zach knew now that his soulmate really had the same doubts he did. He'd have to prove it to...whoever it was, but he was going to be awfully surprised if it was Burns.

  


Zach wasn't surprised. Roli's lingering guest was indeed Mikko Koivu, and he didn't look icy that night. He looked downright awkward. He'd filled out a bit since 2005, no longer as angular and gawky, but his body language fit the body he used to have more than it fit this one. The clothes he had on, too, seemed to fit the sort of awkward man he was. He hadn't seen anyone under thirty wearing a cardigan with elbow patches, but here was Koivu in front of him, being the world's oldest twenty-six-year-old. The little shy smile he had was actually kind of attractive.

"Mikko really wanted to stay to meet you," Roli said. "And I think he's got something to say to you, and maybe show you."

Mikko actually blushed a little bit as he held out his hand for Zach to shake. "It's nice to finally meet you when you're not holding a stick and competing against us."

Zach enthusiastically shook it and felt the same warm buzzy feeling he had felt at Worlds. "It's nice to meet you, too. You're not what I expected."

"You kind of are what I expected. Warm and friendly and...you just make people happy, you know?"

Roli smiled at them. "Yeah, Zach is good at making people feel welcome. I'll just take myself out and you guys can talk."

Mikko looked at Roli leaving as he left them in the living room. "I'm so glad I told him. He's the man I really admire most, you know, he taught me everything and he's been walking me through this. I guess, being captain now myself this month, some other player may put me in this situation now or in future and I'll have to walk him through it myself, and...it's hard?"

It was hard. Zach saw poor nervous Mikko trying to fold himself up to hide in his sweater and realized that this could have been the hardest thing that he'd ever done. It was about to be the hardest thing Zach had ever done. "Yeah. It is."

Mikko took a deep breath and started talking rapidly. "Roli told me this afternoon that he thought you were my soulmate. He was the first person on the team I told when my words showed up that night. You're the only guy on the Devils with a soulmark that could match anything said in a hockey game, and I'm the only one on the Wild with the same thing, and then he asked you when yours came in and it matches. Every time we were on the ice together, I felt something, you were the only one I could ever watch. I should have known and I'm so sorry I was so afraid to look for you earlier."

"Me too, actually." Zach hugged him. He felt like leaping into his arms, but he also felt like that was a bit too soon. Mikko hugged him back, a bit awkwardly. Being in each other's embrace was such a warm, cozy feeling, like coming home. It was the best feeling in the world.

Zach had to ask. "Where is your mark? I need to see it, before it changes. I just need to know."

Mikko grinned. "I think that's the reason nobody who wasn't told knows about it. It's in the worst place. I have to take my pants off."

"So do I. It's not a tramp stamp, is it?"

"Wow." Mikko started laughing, an unexpectedly hearty laugh. "No, it's not that obvious, but that's yours, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Roli didn't tell you, but that's where it is." Zach pulled down his own pants a bit and lifted his shirt as he turned around to show Mikko.

"'Oof.' I must have not had the brain left to swear."

"That's originally why I didn't think it was you. I've heard you on the ice."

"Everybody has." Mikko had his pants off. "You're going to have to get really close to see it. Like, if you were going to blow me close."

Zach didn't know how far he could go with Mikko in terms of teasing, but it wasn't like he'd never been chirped before. And they were probably soulmates, and Mikko really was extremely attractive with his pants down. "I'm probably going to, eventually, so no problem there."

Mikko laughed again. "Yeah, you probably are going to. And yours, well, your mark is in the right place for someone with a great ass, so the universe knows what it's doing. Yeah, look right here, high in my right inner thigh."

Zach could see the silvery mark there. "'Ugh?' I said 'ugh?'"

"I assume you did when I gave you one of those elbows that didn't get called. But I did that to a lot of guys that night, so wasn't sure if it was you or someone else, you know? I for sure knew it wasn't anyone who said 'fuck.'"

Zach tried to think back to that night. Mikko had indeed given him a few. "I must have been taken by surprise, but not that much. It's me. And you feel right when we touch, and I can feel you right now, and you feel really overwhelmed and...."

"Yeah. I do. You feel so right too, I don't ever want you to go away, and we have to play against each other tomorrow night, what are we going to do?"

"The same thing we do every night. Try and win the game for our teams. But tonight, we can be together, right? That's why Roli asked me to bring my stuff to stay?"

"Yeah, he said I could stay in his guest room with my surprise soulmate if it really worked out. It really worked out. I'd rather stay here than in a hotel room, and at least my team knows where I am. It's safe here. I hope you feel like that too."

"It's with you. And you want me too, and I want you, and it's the safest feeling ever." Zach couldn't believe it, but it was true. Mikko was the person Zach was meant to be with.

Mikko took Zach into his arms and bent down to kiss him. Zach returned the kiss and felt warmth go throughout his body, straight to his soulmark which he could feel changing as they kissed.

They stood in the living room pressed against each other for a long time. They felt like one person in two bodies; everything one perceived the other did as well. Zach knew it was the sign of a successful bonding, everyone knew it, but it was impossible to tell what it felt like until it happened.

"Let's go to the guest room now and sleep, okay?" Mikko said. "We have to get some sleep, or our teams are going to be really pissed off at us tomorrow night."

"I don't care, Mikko." Zach followed Mikko to the guest room.

"Oh, yes, you do, I feel you caring right now." Mikko ruffled Zach's hair. "You're like me, you can't stop."

"That's why we're meant for each other, isn't it?"

"I think so. Now, let's share the bed, even if we don't do anything in it? I want to, but Roli and his family are here and they'd hear everything and...no. I tell him a lot but I don't want to share that."

Zach laughed. "You can come over to my place tomorrow if we get the chance."

"It's going to be our last chance, unless we get permission to spend the offday after tomorrow together before we head home."

"We're going on the road to Boston, but I can try. They'll understand, I hope; we're not the first soulmates on different teams and the first few days are supposed to be so difficult."

Mikko nodded. Zach watched him take off his clothes. Mikko, taken objectively, really wasn't his type, or wasn't his type yet; Zach liked men who were a bit thicker than Mikko was. It didn't mean that he wasn't handsome, and it didn't mean that Zach wasn't attracted to him at all. Mikko, his soulmate, was far more attractive. He glowed in Zach's sight, and it was awesome.

"I didn't know that it would be like this. Nobody ever tells you," Zach said.

"No, they don't." Mikko was watching him now and the feeling Zach got seemed to indicate that Mikko was thinking the same things about him. "Can you turn around once you're done undressing? I want to see what your mark is now."

Zach turned around. "I want to see yours too, of course."

"You'll have to come closer for that. Yours changed into a bird, a gull, I think."

Zach did come closer to Mikko and looked at his mark. "It looks like an ocean wave. They go together, peaceful, flying together over a long distance, maybe?"

Mikko nodded. His tired smile matched his absent, drifting eyes. "We'll go together that way, all our lives. You know, when I hugged you, both times, it felt like you wanted to leap into my arms. I wasn't prepared for that!"

"If we had been on the ice, I just may have. It's easier for me to take off that way. The guys keep saying I'm going to hurt someone in the celly one day."

"Someday we'll do it together, you know. We have to plan where we're going to play, when our contracts are up."

"Our agents can figure that out."

"I'm not sure if the Devils would want me. Or how I'd fit in here. I fit in well where I am. I think you would too."

Zach crawled into bed. Mikko did, too, at the exact same time with the exact same motions on the other side of the bed. "We have to see about it. I think you'd fit in here, too."

"I don't know. Roli says he likes it here, but he also says he misses me a lot. I don't know why he likes me so much! I'm nothing special."

"I'm beginning to think you are, and not just because we're bonded now. But, yes, I do like my teammates. I'm not sure how I feel about New Jersey. It's not Minnesota."

Mikko nodded and put his arms around Zach, drawing him close to him. "I like to visit big cities but I am unsure if I'd like to live there. Montreal was so big, so busy, my brother got to like it but I am not sure if I ever would."

"We have so much to plan so we can be together forever."

"Yes, but right now, we have tonight, and we both worry over the future and I don't think it's just because we're sharing feelings. Like we said earlier, that is why we are together. We have tonight and tomorrow we will try to beat each other, and then I will miss you for another month, even worse than I've missed you for the past three years. And I have. We just have to make up for it extra now."

Zach was sleepy, but he felt safe in this strange guest room, in the arms of a stranger he felt like he had known for years. He'd get to know Mikko better. They had the rest of their lives for it.

* * *

It had taken Zach a long while to get to this day. He was going to hit unrestricted free agency a year after Mikko would have, in any case, but Mikko signed an extension with the Wild the season before he would have been able to choose. Mikko hadn't wanted to come to New Jersey, in the end. He had been given the permanent captaincy at the start of the 2009-10 season and he wanted to push through the difficulties with the team that drafted him and had given him their trust. Also, he had said sadly to Zach, the Devils weren't a team that was going places, they were a team that was already at the right place and his presence on their roster wouldn't have done them much good. Mikko, of course, said that right after he signed his extension and had no way of foreseeing the next season for the Devils. It seemed like Mikko believed in them more than some of Zach's own teammates.

Mikko had no way of foreseeing that the Devils would make it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals in Zach's last season before free agency and his first season as Devils captain. They had finally done almost everything Zach had wanted in his life, but lately it seemed like Zach's career had hit a lot of second places: second place for the US at the Olympics, second place for the Devils in 2012. It was time for a change and to finally be together with his soulmate, if such a thing would be even possible.

Zach and Mikko hadn't really broadcasted their relationship around the league. Zach's teammates could see that his mark had changed but he hadn't revealed who his other half was. Roli wasn't going to blab either. Very few people even knew about Mikko's mark at all. This was good; teams couldn't use their soulbond as leverage in contract negotiations. This was also bad, because it meant Zach had to hide his future plans from almost everyone.

Ryan Suter was the exception to almost everyone. He and Zach had been friends since they played together on the US U18 national team. They both were drafted in the same year, made their NHL debuts in the same season, and were as close as two guys who weren't soulmates and who were from different states, went to different colleges, and played for different NHL teams possibly could be. Ryan was the first person outside of his family who Zach told about finding his soulmate. Ryan was just as surprised at his identity as Zach was, but he was extremely supportive.

He was so supportive, in fact, that he came up with a plan that would get all three of them on the same team. Ryan's contract was also up after the 2011-12 season. "Let's make this a team effort," he said to Zach. "We'll try to negotiate together. We're just the thing to make the Wild turn around, and even better if we come as a package. Besides, I'd like to be closer to home. My wife would also like to be closer to home."

Zach had been thinking about playing for the Wild, even if Mikko hadn't been his soulmate. He wanted to come home, too, and this only made it worse. They had been playing for three years without each other. Meeting up at the Olympics and during the season wasn't enough. He missed Mikko every day. "Yeah, sure, I'll call my agent and we'll go for it." 

The Wild indeed went for it in a big way, matching thirteen-year contracts, and here he and Ryan were on a hot day in July, stuck at a press conference that would announce it to the world. Mikko was there, even though there was no plausible reason for him to be there. He was normally in Finland that time of year, but he had stayed for only one reason. There was something else for Zach to announce, and he did at the end of the press conference.

"My soulmate is in the audience here, and I'm happy to say that we're going to have at least the next seven years together on this team, and Ryan, myself, and my beloved Mikko are going to try our hardest to bring Minnesota the Cup."

Mikko turned red as a beet with that announcement, but Zach didn't care. All that mattered is that they would be together from now on, on the ice and off, forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta for telling me that this really needed the 2013 ending. Any errors in nicknames for Devils players from 14 years ago are mine. (Rolston's is accurate; but only for what the Wild, and Mikko Koivu, called him.)


End file.
